


The Journey That Matters

by ScarlettP



Category: A Fisherman of the Inland Sea - Ursula K. Le Guin, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Birthday of the World - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Hunger Games, Multi, Original Character(s), Sedoretu
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 07:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2764511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarlettP/pseuds/ScarlettP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I love what we have together, and…I want to get married with you. I want us to find a woman and a man we both like, so we can form a sedoretu together.”</p><p>“Oh,” she says. “But I don’t even know if we like the same type.”</p><p>Relationships are so much more complicated when you’re expected to have three at once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peeta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### A/N:
> 
> I can’t believe no one’s ever written a HG sedoretu fanfic before – it just seems to fit the characters so well. A sedoretu is a kind of group marriage, found in three short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin: “Another Story,” “Unchosen Love,” and “Mountain Ways” (and if you are unfamiliar with Ursula Le Guin, you should go read her right now. I’ll wait). There’s a glossary at the end of the chapter to explain what a sedoretu is and how it works.
> 
> I just found the dynamic of this type of relationship really interesting – I mean, relationships are complicated enough when there are only two people involved. And it was an excuse to spend some time with my four favorite characters!
> 
> I want to thank my outstanding betas, Ketchupgirl, who challenged me to be a better writer, and Karen0DuLay, who encouraged me when I most needed it.
> 
> I am not connected with Suzanne Collins, Ursula K. Le Guin, or their respective publishers in any way. This is solely a not-for-profit fan activity, and in no way intends to infringe on copyrights held by the authors or publishers of the original works that inspired this fanfiction.

## Chapter 1. Peeta

It’s one of my earliest clear memories.

I’m four, and my brothers Bannik and Reeiske are six and eight. We’re crouched on the floor of our bedroom near the door, squeezing each others’ hands, listening to our parents argue. Bannik’s eyes are huge, and Reese looks like he’s trying not to cry. I’m not sure how long the fighting has been going on.

“I wish you’d never married me! Why did you?” our mother shouts.

“You know why,” Father answers.

“Stop saying that!” Mother is crying now. “Why am I not enough for you? Why can’t you love me the way you love Allan? The way you love _her_?” Reese squeezes my hand, hard, when Mother says that. I don’t know why. Allan is our otherfather, so I guess “her” is Dolores, our othermother. Why shouldn’t Father love her?

“Juniper, stop. Why are you bringing _her_ up again?” Father raises his voice now, too.

“Because I know you still love her!”

“She’s gone, Juniper! She’s out of our lives! Why do you have to keep punishing me like this?” Father yells. Out of our lives? Whoever “she” is, it’s not our othermother.

“You’re the one punishing me!” our mother spits back. “Here I am, your Morning wife, and instead of loving me you love an Evening woman! It’s an“ – and here my mother uses a word which I don’t understand at the time, but she’s used it so often in fights since that I know now it must have been “abomination”.

She keeps yelling, calling Father names, but he storms out of her bedroom and out the front door. Now Mother starts crying instead. Her agonized wails seem to fill the house.

Reese and Bannik get up and grab my hands, and together we run down the hall to our othermother Dolores’s room. We throw ourselves into her arms and she wraps us in a tight hug. Dolores is always gentle and steady and affectionate, and I love spending time with her.

Reese and Bannik have started crying, so I do too. “There, there,” Dolores says. “It’ll be all right. He’ll come back. We just have to give him some time.”

“Why was Mother saying those things?” Bannik asks.

“Because she’s unhappy, love. People who are unhappy sometimes say mean things, because they hope it will get the unhappiness out.”

“Why is Mother unhappy?” I ask.

“She’s only unhappy sometimes, sweetheart. Try not to worry about it anymore tonight. It’s late, and you three need to sleep. Would you like to sleep in Delly’s room tonight?” We nod. Dolores takes Reese’s hand, he takes Bannik’s, and Bannik takes mine, and we trail after Dolores like ducklings into our sister-germane Delly’s bedroom.

“Delly, are you awake?” Dolores says softly. Delly nods and rubs her eyes. “You don’t need to wake up, sweetie, but the boys are going to stay with you tonight. Is that all right?” Delly nods again. I don’t think she’s really awake. Dolores tucks me in next to Delly and then makes up the second bed for Reese and Bannik. Delly puts her arm over me and holds me.

“Don’t worry, loves,” Dolores says from the doorway. “I’ll send Otherfather out to talk to your father, and I’ll go talk to your mother. You’ll see. Everything will be fine.” She shuts the bedroom door behind her. I lay awake for a while, listening to Delly’s even breathing. I think about the things I heard Mother say, but I don’t know what to make of them. Finally I fall asleep.

In the morning everyone seems to be back to normal, as if nothing had happened. So I put the fight and the things my parents said to each other out of my mind.

Until the next time they fight.

***

I remember my first day of school. Mother and Father had been fighting the night before, and Father is quiet that morning as he leads me and Delly to where the other five-year-olds are waiting in the schoolyard. Suddenly Father stops, and I look up at him to see why. He’s looking at an Evening girl on the edge of the group of children, with her hair in braids and wearing a red plaid dress. His jaw is tight, and he swallows hard. Then he notices me looking at him and smoothes his face into a smile. “See that little girl?” he says to Delly and me. “The one in the red dress? I used to be friends with her mother.”

“Aren’t you friends anymore?” I ask.

“Oh…” he says, and clears his throat. “No,” he says quietly.

“Why not?” Delly asks.

He pulls his eyebrows together. “I, ahh…. She got married to some coal miners, so she moved far away to the Seam.”

“Coal miners? Why does that mean you’re not friends?” I ask.

“When her Morning husband sings, even the birds stop to listen.”

I consider this. “I still don’t understand why you’re not friends just because her Morning husband sings.”

He kind of laughs quietly. Then he smiles at us again and takes a deep breath. “Well,” he says, in the cheerful voice he uses when he reads us stories, “you see, she’s too busy listening to him sing to think about being friends with me!” This seems like a strange answer to me, but just then the bell rings and Delly and I have to go find our teacher. I’m in the same classroom with Delly, but I notice that the Evening girl goes into a different classroom, and somehow I’m a little disappointed by this. But everything about school is so new and confusing that I don’t have time to think about why I’m disappointed, or about what my father said.

Later that day our teacher leads us into a big hall so we can have music assembly with all the other classes of five-year-olds. As Delly and I sit down on the carpet, I look to see if I can see the Evening girl in the red dress, but there are so many of us that I can’t find her. With that many children in one room, it takes a while for all of us to settle down. But the teachers just wait. Finally we’re so quiet that we can hear the birds in the trees outside the windows. That’s when the music teacher asks us all if anybody knows the valley song. One hand shoots right up in the air before anybody else, a hand wearing a red plaid sleeve. The teacher calls her forward and asks what her name is. “Katniss Everdeen,” she says.

“Katniss Everdeen,” I whisper to myself. Delly nudges me, because we’re not supposed to whisper in school.

“Well, Katniss,” the music teacher says, “why don’t you stand up on this stool and sing the valley song for us all?” And she does, and she’s not the least bit shy about singing in front of such a huge group of kids, and when she sings her voice is so pure and beautiful that every bird outside the windows falls silent. And by the time her song ends, I know I’m a goner.

***

It’s a rainy afternoon in April, a few weeks after my twelfth birthday. Even though my father has never mentioned Katniss’s mother to me since my first day of school, I’ve figured out that she’s the “she” I heard them fighting about when I was little. The fighting has become commonplace, and “she” generally comes up sooner or later.

In fact, they fought just last night. It was a pretty bad one, and no one in the house has gotten much sleep. The fight finally ended when my father walked out again. This time he stayed away for hours, only coming back when it was time to start baking early this morning.

Now he’s upstairs catching up on his sleep, and my otherparents and Delly are working in the shoe store. Reese and Bannik are at wrestling practice, and I’m in the bakery with my mother. She’s short-tempered today – because of the fight, or the lack of sleep, or both. Sometimes I feel bad for her. What must it be like, to love your husband but know that he loves someone else instead? I’ve seen the way my mother tries to take my father’s hand or touch his arm sometimes. Usually he just stands there until she stops. The thing is, my father is really charming and funny with everyone else, and he and Allan are affectionate all the time. I don’t know why he isn’t kinder to my mother. Maybe if he were, things at home would be easier for all of us.

I’m rearranging the display case so it looks fuller when out of the corner of my eye I see my mother go out the back door. She starts yelling at someone, and at first I think she’s yelling at my father. But then I hear something about Peacekeepers and Seam brats, so I go outside to see who it is.

It’s Katniss.

I duck back into the doorway, hoping she doesn’t see me. I don’t know why my mother is yelling at her like this, but I’m embarrassed by it. I don’t think my mother knows who Katniss is, and I’m glad of that, at least, because then she would probably be yelling something a lot worse than “Seam brat.”

I poke my head out from behind my mother to see what it is that Katniss is doing. She’s putting the lid back on our garbage can. I try to figure out why she was looking in our garbage can, and just then she looks up at me. I’m stunned by what I see. I suppose because I see her every day at school, I haven’t seen how frighteningly thin she’s grown. There are dark shadows under her eyes, and her skin seems to be stretched too tightly over her cheekbones. Worst of all, her eyes are dull, almost as if she’s not even really seeing me at all.

Suddenly I realize: Katniss Everdeen was looking in our garbage can for something to eat.

She’s starving. How long has this been going on? Why haven’t I noticed it before? Her father and her otherparents died in the mine explosion a few months ago, but her mother is still alive – how can things be this bad?

My mother’s already gone back inside, but I watch as Katniss shuffles over to our apple tree and collapses against the trunk. I’m desperate to help her somehow, but I haven’t got a clue what to do.

Just then my mother calls me to come take the raisin nut bread out of the oven, and I get an idea. I rush inside, grab the bread spatula, and hurriedly slide out the loaves two at a time. I hope I can finish before Katniss decides to leave. As I’m taking out the last two, I loosen my grip on the spatula so it tilts, and the two loaves slide off and land against the white-hot wall of the oven. The smell of burnt bread fills the kitchen.

My mother yells at me for being so clumsy as I regain my grip on the spatula and fish the now blackened loaves out of the oven. In one hand she’s holding the wooden spoon she was using to smooth the filling in the pie crusts, and she’s shaking it at me. Suddenly she catches me across the cheek with it, hard. The pain makes my eyes water, but she doesn’t seem to notice, she’s so busy yelling. Finally she says it – she tells me to throw the loaves to the pig.

I grab the still-hot loaves and go outside, but my mother follows me, still yelling. Katniss is sitting under the tree, but I can’t give her the bread while my mother is watching. I tear off a piece of one of the loaves, and just as I’ve thrown it into the pig trough, the bell rings, the one over the front door of the bakery. My mother goes back inside, and as soon as she’s gone I toss the loaves to Katniss, one after the other.

Then I go back inside and shut the door. I’m not sure why I didn’t say anything to her. Maybe I’m embarrassed – that I watched my mother yell at her, that Katniss saw my mother yelling at me, that I haven’t helped her before now, that I never even saw she needed help. Or maybe I think she might not take the bread if someone’s watching her.

When I glance out the window a few minutes later, she’s gone, and so is the bread.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### Glossary:
> 
> Moiety: In addition to there being two genders, people are also divided up into two types called “moieties.” Having a romantic or sexual relationship with someone of your own moiety is the worst taboo imaginable, worse even than incest.
> 
> Morning and Evening: The names for the two moieties. It’s got nothing to do with what time you like to wake up, that’s just what they’re called. You inherit your moiety from your mother, so if she is a Morning, you are too.
> 
> Sedoretu: A marriage. There is no such thing as a marriage between just two people. There are always four people in a sedoretu – a man and a woman of the Morning moiety and a man and a woman of the Evening moiety. Within the sedoretu, you are expected to have a sexual relationship with the man and the woman of the opposite moiety to yours, and a close platonic relationship with the person of the same moiety as yours (and the opposite gender).
> 
> Otherparents: The other two members of your parents’ sedoretu. All four members of the sedoretu are equally involved in raising each other’s children, and the children treat their non-biological parents, called their “otherparents,” with as much love and respect as their biological parents.
> 
> Sibling-germanes: The children of your otherparents. Children are generally as close to their sibling-germanes as they are to their biological siblings.


	2. Katniss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### A/N:
> 
> A quick note on the chronology: Because each chapter will be written from the point of view of a different character, the chronology will jump around slightly from one chapter to the next depending on what events that chapter’s narrator wants to talk about.
> 
> I could not ask for better betas than Ketchupgirl and Karen0DuLay. Not only are they eagle-eyed at spotting my mistakes and inconsistencies, but they also make me think more about what I’ve written and are helping me to grow as a writer.
> 
> I am not connected with Suzanne Collins, Ursula K. Le Guin, or their respective publishers in any way. This is solely a not-for-profit fan activity, and in no way intends to infringe on copyrights held by the authors or publishers of the original works that inspired this fanfiction.
> 
> Comments are always appreciated. Thank you for reading!

## Chapter 2. Katniss

It started in the spring term of ninth grade. We had to find lab partners for science class. “I’ll pair up anyone left without a partner,” the teacher said. I guess Madge didn’t have any friends either, because she and I were the only two left alone.

Neither of us spoke much – really, just what we had to say to get the lab project done. But the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. I had expected her to look down on me, because she was from town and I was from the Seam. But I never felt that from her. She just didn’t talk much. Like me.

She was smart, and a hard worker, and working with her was pretty nice. I guess she must have thought the same about me, because after we turned our project in, she asked me if I wanted to partner with her the next time we had a project.

“Sure,” I said, surprised. “But won’t that be, I don’t know, bad for your reputation or something? Hanging out with a Seam kid?” Her father was the mayor, so if District 12 had anything like an upper class, she was it.

She shrugged. “We’re all from District 12, aren’t we? And if anybody has a problem with it, I’d like to see them say something.” I was surprised by how hard her eyes were when she said that, and I began to suspect that there was more to Madge than just being the pretty blonde mayor’s daughter. Then she looked at me like she was considering something. “Besides,” she said suddenly, “my Morning father was from the Seam.” Just then the bell rang, and she turned and went off to her next class.

I headed down the hall in the opposite direction, more slowly. I knew there was some story about her otherparents dying when she was very small, even though I didn’t know all the details – but I hadn’t realized that her otherfather had been from the Seam. People had given my mother a hard time when she ran away from town to form a sedoretu in the Seam. I would have thought that the mayor marrying someone from the Seam would have been such a scandal the entire District would still be talking about it.

At least now I understood why she didn’t look down on me for being from the Seam.

Ever since my father had died, I’d sat by myself at lunch, because on the days I didn’t have anything to eat it was easier to sit by myself than answer any questions about where my lunch was. Even though we were doing better by this time, I still didn’t always have much, and I didn’t want to have to explain why I was bringing squirrel or wild rabbit for lunch. That could have led to tricky discussions. Eating alone had become a habit by this time, anyway.

But the day after Madge told me her otherfather had been from the Seam, I looked for her at lunch. I don’t know if I had it in mind to say anything to her about that, or if I was planning to say anything in particular. But she was sitting by herself too, so I just walked up and asked if I could sit with her. She looked me in the eye and nodded. Her face wasn’t unfriendly or closed off, but it wasn’t like she had a huge smile on her face either.

That was one of the reasons I had liked being lab partners with her – she wasn’t giggly or constantly cheerful, like so many of the girls in our class were. She was just quiet – she was just herself.

I sat down across from her and got out my lunch. I only had some roast squirrel and an apple – it probably looked like a strange lunch to her, but to her credit she didn’t say anything about it. We ate in the same comfortable silence in which we’d completed our lab project. My lunch was smaller than hers, so I finished before she did. As I got up to go, she looked me in the eye again and said, “Thank you for coming to sit with me, Katniss.” That was all.

After that, I started eating with her every day. It wasn’t something we talked about doing; I just came and sat with her the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that too.

Then it was summer, and she started answering the door when Gale and I came to her house to sell wild strawberries to her father. I suggested to Gale that we could get done faster if we split up when we sold things in town. I also said I’d take the mayor’s house.

When the new school year started, Madge and I had English together, and she asked if I’d mind sitting together. I said that’d be fine.

The next time we had a lab project in science class, the two of us partnered up. She asked me if I wanted to come over to her house after school to work on our report. I said yes, so we agreed to meet outside the school after our last class.

We walked to her house in our familiar silence.

She let us inside and I followed her up the stairs to her bedroom. “Madge, is that you?” a woman’s voice called weakly from the next floor up.

“Yes, mother. And I’ve brought a friend home. Katniss. We’re going to work on a science project,” Madge called back. “Do you need anything?”

“No, sweetheart. I’m fine, thank you,” the voice answered.

“My mother gets headaches,” Madge told me. “Ever since my othermother died.” She didn’t offer any more explanation, and I didn’t ask for any.

Madge’s room had straw-colored paper decorated with big white flowers on the walls. There was a braided rug on the wooden floor, like we had at home. It made me happy to see it. To see that Madge and I had something specific in common, even if it was just a rug.

Her desk wasn’t wide enough for us to sit at it with two chairs, so Madge brought up the piano bench from the downstairs sitting room. It wasn’t very wide, either, and we had to sit right next to each other in order to fit.

I’d never sat so close to Madge before, and it was hard to concentrate on our science project. Her hair smelled a little like oranges, and her leg was pressed right up against mine. I could feel the warmth from her skin even through our clothes.

We worked for about an hour, and then I helped her take the piano bench back downstairs. “Can you play?” I asked. She nodded. “Can I hear you play sometime?”

“Of course, if you want,” Madge said. “Just not today. I’m not supposed to play when my mother has a headache.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I have to get home for supper anyway.”

Madge walked me to her front gate. “Do you want to come over again tomorrow?” she asked.

We were too low on food at home for me not to go hunting the next day. “I want to, but I can’t. I have to…help my family.”

“Hunting?” she said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear her. Her directness took me by surprise. Of course people knew I hunted – I sold what I caught to enough people in town, and at the Hob – but nobody usually talked about it out loud. Officially, the woods were Capitol property, so every time I hunted I was poaching as well as trespassing, and my customers were buying stolen property. If any of us ever got caught, we’d be lucky to get away with a public whipping. But Madge had never given me a reason not to trust her, so I nodded.

“It’s amazing that you do that,” Madge said. I’m not sure what I expected her to think, but it wasn’t that. “You’re welcome to come over whenever you like. To do homework together, or whatever. I like having you here, Katniss.”

Her frankness caught me off guard, and so did the sudden warmth that rushed through me at her words.

I did go over to her house sometimes after that, but not very often. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t often have time. The days were getting shorter, and I had to check my traps and hunt while it was still light.

Then it was spring term again. We still had English together, and this time we just sat together automatically without either of us having to say anything about it. We still ate together at lunch, too.

One afternoon Madge played the piano for me. I’d heard the music teacher play during music assembly, of course, but that was usually just to teach us the song we were supposed to be learning, or to accompany us while we sang. I’d never heard anyone play the piano before like Madge did –all the notes falling all over each other like a waterfall, clear and bright and sparkling.

When she was finished, she didn’t turn her head to me, but just looked at me out of the corner of her eyes. I felt lightheaded, from the music and something else too. “That was…amazing. Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “I’m very glad you liked it.”

“Madge, how come you were sitting by yourself at lunch?” I asked.

“Why were you?”

“No, I mean, your father is the mayor. I would think girls would be standing in line to be your friend.”

“That’s why. I don’t want to be friends with someone who only wants to be my friend because of whose daughter I am,” she said. I hadn’t thought of it like that, and that embarrassed me. “That’s why I like you, Katniss. You don’t care about that. You just take me as I am.”

I hadn’t put it in words before, but that was one of the reasons I liked Madge so much, too. That she didn’t care about the differences between us.

She reached over and took my hand.

Her hand was soft and warm.

When the days started getting longer, I was able to come over more often. One afternoon I was helping her weed the garden in her backyard. I guess all the time I spent digging up plants in the woods came in handy, because I turned out to be very good at weeding. Madge was hunched over a particularly stubborn weed, clearing away the dirt around it to make it easier to pull up. Suddenly she sat back on her heels and said, “What’s it like in the woods?”

She was so good at saying things that caught me off guard. I’d decided I liked that about her, too. I considered her question for a moment and then said, “Quiet. Relaxing. It’s easy to think there.”

“Are the animals dangerous?” she asked.

“Some are, but they usually leave you alone, if you don’t bother them.”

“Will you take me?” she said.

“Really? You’d go to the woods?” I said.

“If you take me,” she said again.

“You know it’s illegal to go into the woods.”

“I know.” She held my gaze, waiting for my answer.

“All right. Once school lets out for the summer. I’ll have more time then.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

On the last day of school she said, “Remember where you said you’d take me this summer,” as we walked into English class together.

“Of course I remember,” I said. “You still want to go?”

“Of course I do.”

I couldn’t help grinning when she said that. “Okay. We’ll go tomorrow morning. Early. Wear old clothes,” I said.

She came to my house early the next morning, and I took her through the Meadow to the fence enclosing District 12. As usual, the electricity was turned off, so I showed her how to slip under the fence and we headed out into the woods. We were early enough that the morning mist hadn’t entirely cleared, and it made the birdsong seem quieter than usual. Madge looked up at the tops of the trees and inhaled through her mouth. For a moment I thought she was nervous about being out here, but then I saw that she was smiling. She crouched down and pressed her hands into a clump of moss on the ground. Then she stood up and held her hands against the trunk of a tree.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’ve never been out here before. I want to learn how everything feels,” she said.

At school they tell us all the time how dangerous it is in the woods and that we should never try to go beyond the fence surrounding District 12. They say it’s for our own safety that trespassing in the woods is illegal. Most people don’t question that. Most people are too scared to ever venture out into the woods. But Madge was standing there like it was no more frightening than her own backyard.

At first we just walked around under the trees and didn’t go too far from the fence. I told her the names of plants we saw and showed her how to recognize different birds. The only other person I’d ever taken to the woods was Prim, and she’d hated it. I hadn’t thought I’d enjoy sharing my woods with anyone but Prim, except for Gale. But I liked having Madge there with me, walking next to me. It was nice. It felt relaxing, somehow. That day we didn’t stay out long, only an hour or two.

Madge didn’t come to the woods with me the next day, because Gale and I had to hunt. But the day after that I took her to where I hid the small bow I’d learned to hunt with. “You played piano for me,” I told her, “so I’m going to show you how to shoot.” I hadn’t expected her eyes to light up like that, and for a second I forgot what I’d been saying.

The target was an old grain bag I leaned against a tree. I showed her how to stand and hold the bow. Then I went to stand behind her and put my hand on her drawing elbow to help her keep the right position. She’d tied her hair back with a kerchief, and a few tendrils of hair had escaped and fell in curls at the nape of her neck. “Deep, even breaths,” I said. “Use your back to draw, and keep your shoulders low.”

Her first couple of shots missed the target. Our fingers touched as she took the third arrow from me. She nocked the arrow, drew the bow, and released the string – and the arrow hit the target, just at the edge. She laughed and jumped up and down. “You’re a great teacher, Katniss!” she said.

She turned to hand me the bow and our eyes met. I’m not sure how long we just stood there, with both our hands on the bow, neither of us moving. The air tingled, like when you know there’s an animal nearby but you haven’t seen it yet. Suddenly Madge leaned in and kissed me. The kiss seemed to travel, soft and warm, from her lips all the way down to my stomach, and then spread out from there to every part of my body. I let the bow slide to the ground and put my arms around her.

Finally we released each other. Madge turned her head away a little and looked at me out of the corner of her eyes, like she had after she’d played the piano for me. My breath caught and I leaned over and kissed her again.

“Don’t think this means you get out of teaching me archery,” Madge said, and I laughed.


	3. Gale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### A/N:
> 
> I know the dialogue in this chapter doesn’t entirely match the dialogue in the same scene in the books, but the books give the dialogue as Katniss recalled it, and Gale might well have a different recollection of how those conversations went!
> 
> My phenomenal betas, Ketchupgirl and Karen0DuLay, are always willing to take the time to give me feedback and encouragement. I am deeply grateful for all their help, the more so because I know how busy they both are!
> 
> You can find some extra information about sedoretus and moieties in the notes at the end of the chapter.
> 
> I am not connected with Suzanne Collins, Ursula K. Le Guin, or their respective publishers in any way. This is solely a not-for-profit fan activity, and in no way intends to infringe on copyrights held by the authors or publishers of the original works that inspired this fanfiction.
> 
> If you leave a comment, I will respond. And thank you to everyone who has commented or left kudos or bookmarked this fic! I’m honored you enjoy it so much!

## Chapter 3. Gale

The mine explosion that killed my father and paralyzed my othermother happened the January before I turned fourteen.

What I remember most clearly about that year wasn’t the grief of losing my father, or the fear of losing my othermother, or the worry of how my family would get by. It was anger. Anger at my father for leaving us, anger at the Capitol for having a system where they didn’t care whether children starved or families were torn apart, anger at my mother and Phil and Ada for deciding that the Everdeens should live with us, and anger at Katniss for (I thought) telling me that I wasn’t a good enough hunter to contribute to the family.

Explosions in the mines aren’t uncommon, but this one was one of the worst in years. Almost every Seam family lost somebody. Some kids lost all their parents in the explosion, or one parent survived but they were injured so badly they couldn’t work anymore. Those kids got sent to the community home. For a lot of Seam families, even losing one family member meant they didn’t earn enough to survive. A lot of people borrowed against their salaries that year.

See, there’s this system for the mine workers where you can borrow money from the Capitol against next year’s salary, and then when next year comes around, you pay back what you borrowed, plus interest. But what the Capitol takes doesn’t leave you enough to live on, so most people have to borrow against their salary for the year after that too. Once you start borrowing, it’s almost impossible to ever pay off the debt, and that also means you can’t ever retire, because you can’t stop working as long as you owe the Capitol money. And after you die the Capitol takes what you still owe it out of your family’s salaries. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s part of why it’s so hard for Seam people to ever get out of the Seam, and it’s also a big reason for all the resentment Seam people have towards people from town. Even the poorest town families make more than the average Seam family, so they don’t need to borrow.

When the explosion happened, my mother wasn’t working in the mines because she was pregnant with my sister Posy. It was just pure luck that my otherfather Phil hadn’t been working the same shift as my father and my othermother Ada. You’d think the Capitol would think about things like that – make sure that different family members are on different shifts, so if something goes wrong, most of the family is still okay. But the miners have to take the shifts they’re given.

Posy was born about a week after the explosion, and she was sick a lot at first, because it was so cold that winter. On top of that, the explosion had broken Ada’s back and she couldn’t stand or use her legs at all anymore. It was even hard for her to sit up for very long. So my mother had to flat-out quit the mines, so she could take care of Posy and Ada. That meant Phil was the only one still working the mines and bringing in a regular wage. That wasn’t enough for a family of seven to live off of, so I started sneaking over the fence whenever I could to fish and set traps for game. My father had been teaching me trapping and fishing before he died. Once Posy got stronger, my mother started taking in laundry. That was something she could do from home, where she could still take care of Ada and us kids. Along with what I brought in from the woods, Phil and my mother earned enough to keep us fed and clothed. We were one of the lucky families.

Katniss lost her father and both her otherparents in the explosion, and the grief pretty much broke her mother. Katniss is tough. Most kids in her situation went to the community home, but Katniss took care of herself and her little sister for months. She probably could have kept on doing it, too, if my mother and otherparents hadn’t finally figured out what was going on.

The August after the explosion, my mother, Phil, and Ada told us boys – my brother-germanes Rory and Vick and me – that they had some news.

“Gale, do you remember your father’s cousin Fletcher?” my mother began. “He was Morning, like your father. We went and visited his family when his daughter Katniss was born. You were around two.”

I shook my head.

“Fletch and your father were real close when they were young, but he moved to a different part of the Seam when he formed his sedoretu, and we didn’t see him so much after that,” Phil said. I wasn’t sure where they were going with this.

“Fletch died in the explosion,” Phil continued, “and so did his Evening husband and his Morning wife.”

Now Ada spoke up. “Their Evening wife is all alone with two kids to take care of. But she’s real sick, it turns out, and they’re not doing well at all.”

“If we’d known how bad things were before, we’d have done something about it earlier. Family takes care of each other,” my mother said. “But it looks like Katniss is just as independent and stubborn as her father ever was, and she’s been trying to hide their situation from everyone. I’m amazed she’s held on this long.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s help them. What do they need?”

Phil smiled at me. “Well, that’s just it, Gale. They’re starving.” He turned to include my brother-germanes in what he was saying. “Boys, your mothers and I have decided that the Everdeens are going to come live with us.”

Rory and Vick just accepted it, the way children always accept what their parents tell them. But I was furious. I was fourteen, almost an adult, and with the game I caught I was contributing to the household just like my mother and otherparents were. I couldn’t believe they would make a decision like this without including me, or at least telling me they were thinking about it first.  
Rory and Vick had to move in with me so Katniss and Prim could have a bedroom to themselves. I resented having to share my bedroom with an eight-year-old and a six-year-old, and Morning children besides, even though it would have happened before long anyway when Posy moved out of my mother’s bedroom.

Amy, Katniss, and Prim Everdeen moved in with us a few weeks later.

As angry as I was about the situation, when I saw them I understood why my mother and Phil and Ada had wanted them to move in with us. Most Seam families had a hard time making ends meet, and food was often scarce for a lot of people. But the three Everdeens were so thin, it was a wonder that they were still walking around. Amy especially had a delicateness about her, like she might break if you brushed against her too hard. And there was a drawn, distant look in her eyes that was unsettling – I couldn’t tell if it was from being so hungry or something else.

Katniss had the same Seam coloring as the rest of us, but surprisingly, Amy and Prim had the blonde hair and blue eyes of people from town. I wondered how someone from town had ended up in a sedoretu in the Seam.

My mother and Phil helped Amy bring her things into my father’s old bedroom, which was where she was going to sleep. Ada and Posy were playing in Ada’s bedroom, to keep Posy out of the way during the move. The five of us kids – me, Rory, and Vick on one side, and Katniss and Prim on the other – sized each other up in the kitchen. Prim had been holding a sack close to her chest, and now she carefully put it down on the floor. Out came the scruffiest-looking cat I’d ever seen.

“What’s that?” Vick asked.

“It’s another mouth to feed,” I said. “Why did you have to bring that along?”

Prim looked at the ground, and Katniss put her arm around her and gave me a dirty look. “His name is Buttercup,” Katniss said. “And he’s a good mouser. You don’t have to worry about feeding him.”

“I didn’t know you like cats so much. Maybe we should call you Catnip,” I said. Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything back.

I hated having them there, at least at first. None of them really talked to us. Phil said I had to remember how much they’d lost, and that on top of that they were living in a strange place, and it would take them time to get used to their new home, and to us. I thought that we’d lost plenty, too.

Prim was like a baby deer at first – she always acted like she was trying to blend into the walls, and whenever you said anything she froze and looked like she was about to bolt. But she got used to us the fastest. Somehow, all of a sudden, she just decided she could trust us. I’m not sure what made the difference, but after that she had smiles and hugs for everyone in the house, and she talked a lot to whoever would listen. She couldn’t get enough of Posy, especially, and she loved helping take care of her.

For the first couple of months Amy stayed in her room most of the time, sitting on the chair or lying in the bed, staring at nothing. Phil and my mother would bring her her meals and they’d have to coax her to eat. After a while she started coming out of her room for a little bit, to wash the dishes or something, and then she’d go back into her room and hide out there. It was winter before she really started responding when we talked to her and even helping out with the cleaning and cooking. When she started brewing plants into remedies, Ada said it was a sign she was ready to deal with the world again.

Amy was clearly broken and sick with grief, and Prim was a child, but it was Katniss who I found the hardest to deal with. She kept to herself as much as she could, and she looked surly most of the time. But we’d kept her family from starving, so I didn’t see what she had to be surly about. She wasn’t rude, at least not to my mother or my otherparents, but she never said more than she had to. And after our first not-quite-conversation about the cat, she hardly ever said anything at all to me.

Katniss spent long hours out of the house, and every so often a squirrel or a rabbit, or maybe some roots or greens, would appear on the kitchen table. I resented it. I was the hunter in the family – the only hunter, now that my father was gone. It was like she was saying I didn’t bring in enough on my own to feed my family.

I started figuring out new ways to set traps and setting more of them. I wasn’t going to let Katniss tell me I wasn’t a good enough trapper. Who did she think she was, anyway? My mother and my otherparents wouldn’t have taken her family in if we couldn’t have fed them.

On Sundays I usually spent the whole day in the woods. It didn’t take that long to check my traps, but with luck I could get two catches a day from the same snare. I’d check them in the morning, reset them, and then check them again later in the day. In between I explored the woods, climbing trees and looking for new places to set traps.

One Sunday in October, I was making one last round of my traps before going home. I’d had a good day – I’d already caught three rabbits that day, and I was hopeful that I might find one more in one of my last snares.

I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw two snares had caught rabbits. I was just about to harvest them when I heard someone hurrying through the trees towards me. I had barely enough time to hide behind a tree. Whoever they were, they were heading right towards my rabbits – and if they saw me too, I could be in serious trouble.

It was Katniss, lugging two burlap sacks and carrying a squirrel at her belt. She stopped stock still when she saw my rabbits. She stared at one intently and then, letting her sacks fall, reached up to touch the wire. Her taking credit for my rabbits was the last thing I was going to let happen, so I took a step towards her and said, “Taking someone else’s game is dangerous.”

She jumped about a foot in the air and turned bright red. “I wasn’t going to take it,” she muttered.

“Good thing, Catnip, because stealing’s punishable by death. Or didn’t you know?”

“Don’t call me that. And I just wanted to see how the snares worked. I can never get mine to catch anything.”

I tilted my head towards the squirrel at her belt and gave her a hard look. “So where’d the squirrel come from?” All that game she brought to the house must have come from _somewhere_.

“I shot it,” she said, and for the first time I noticed the bow she had slung over her shoulder.

A bow! I had had no idea she hunted with a bow. If I had a bow, I could hunt while I was waiting to trap something in my snares and bring home twice as much game. I was so excited by that thought that it crowded out my dislike of her. “Can I see that?” I asked.

She slowly slid it off her shoulder and handed it to me. “Just remember, stealing’s punishable by death.” The surly look on her face didn’t change, but that was the first time I’d heard her crack a joke or just generally act like a human being, and I grinned in spite of myself.

The bow was a little too short to be comfortable, but it still felt powerful. “Did you make this?” I asked.

“No. I’m not that good yet.”

I guessed that the _yet_ meant she did know how to make a bow. I decided to take a chance. Even a bad bow would be better than none at all, and I didn’t know the first thing about making them. “Would you make me one? Not for free – I’ll give you something in return.”

She looked at my rabbits and took her time before answering. “I might be able to get you one. It depends on what you have to trade.”

I knew a cue when I heard one. “How about if I teach you how to set snares?”

“I think we could work something out,” she said.

You definitely couldn’t say we were friends right away, but at least we stopped disliking each other after that. She taught me how to use a bow and find edible plants. I taught her how to fish and set traps. Bit by bit, we started to trust each other more. Once we started helping each other, we started catching more, too; so whatever our families didn’t need, we could trade. We started going to the Hob together and along the town families’ back doors. Gradually, without either of us talking about it, we became a team.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whether someone is a Morning person or an Evening person is as much a part of their identity as their gender. Because you inherit your moiety from your mother, people think of everyone who shares their moiety as being their siblings, in a way. There is a powerful taboo against same-moiety relationships, and anyone caught breaking this taboo is treated with contempt and ostracized. These two ideas are usually enough to keep people from developing romantic or sexual feelings for someone of their moiety.
> 
> Each member of a sedoretu always has their own bedroom, no matter how small the house is or how poor the family. It’s considered essential to the happiness of the sedoretu and the well-being of the entire family.


End file.
